


the end is unknown (but i think i'm ready)

by shuofthewind



Series: The Making of Monsters [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Actual Alley Cat Matthew Murdock, Blatant Misuse of Superpowers, Darcy Lewis Is Not Good At Feelings, Dorks, Explicit Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fucking Finally Guys, Resolved Sexual Tension, Teasing, The Long-Awaited Smutfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 00:58:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4646412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been weeks, and she's starting to get antsy. She gets it, really. But she's starting to get antsy. </p><p>[Or, the one where they finally do it.]</p><p>[<em>The Price of War</em> 'verse. Darcy POV.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	the end is unknown (but i think i'm ready)

**Author's Note:**

> I am ashamed at how long this took to write, but I will gesture emphatically at the phrases "Alix is not good at smuts" and also "Alix is graysexual and sometimes has to research things so they come out right." 
> 
> I don't really think there's any triggers in this aside from all of the sex. With these two. So you know biting is involved. 
> 
> Title from the song "Angels" by The XX, which is a big Darecy song for me. (Actually, on that note, there are more TPoW mixes! Check out amaregg01's "Deus Ex Hoffmana" [a Darcy and Kate being badass mix] and "A Monster, A Bastard, A Murdock," newly created in honor of _a cage for every unclean spirit_. Both of these are on 8tracks. Also, I have one or two on my 8tracks as well, so check it out! My username is shuofthewind.)
> 
> Unbeta'ed. Now I'm going to sleep and pretend I'm not embarrassed as fuck.

She’s not sure if she should be more frightened of or more astounded by the fact that they’ve both managed to keep their hands to themselves for _this long_.

It’s not as though they don’t have extenuating circumstances. Darcy only has one working hand, after all, and Matt’s still bruised to shit from his fight with Fisk. (That’s less a circumstance than a half-baked excuse, though.) Then there’s the suit with Hoffman, which is less of a suit than just nodding along with the guys from the District Attorney’s office (Jen’s about as far away from this as the DA can keep her without being overtly gross about it, since there’s mutterings about _keeping things separate_ and _the possibility of corruption by the defense_ like Darcy’s some kind of corrosive element), but at the same time it does swallow a lot of hours in the day.

On top of that, there’s the fact that she’s still, technically, staying with Jen and Karen about fifty percent of the time (though she’s gathering her things together, for what reason she’s not entirely sure; she tells herself it’s to clear enough room in her bedroom so that they can fit another mattress in for Karen, but that feels weird and hollow and less than hopeful). The nights she spends at Matt’s are usually quieter, downtime, when they’re both exhausted from training or from work. Some nights it takes everything she has just to keep herself standing. It’s not that she hasn’t considered sex with him on those nights, it’s just that it’s never really been placed on the table. They dance around it like it’s a pool of blood, something that they’re both aware is there, but that neither of them really wants to clean up. And in the beginning, yeah, it made sense. After everything, all the shit that went down, all that happened with Fisk and Wesley and Nobu and Gao and Vanessa— _god, Vanessa_ —sex would have been like throwing a lighter into a gasoline tank. Awesome in theory, but with way too much shrapnel to handle.

Now, though. Now it’s different. Now it’s _hard._ There are times when it feels like she can’t even breathe because she wants him so badly. During the day it’s easier. She’s at the office, Foggy and Karen are there, Kate is there a lot of the time, and she’s working, she has a job to do, she has facts to collate and laws to go over, but at night—god. There are moments, when she’s watching him as Daredevil or he’s smiling at her through the mask as Matt, when she just wants to fuck him against a wall, not even caring if anyone could see.

Fogwell’s Gym is probably the hardest, though. It’s a strange, twilight time where she’s not-quite-Lilith and he’s not-quite-Daredevil, and there’s sparks lighting under her skin every time he adjusts her stance, every time he knocks a punch or a blow away from himself, every time he tells her _good_ or _again_ or _higher_. And she knows he knows it, knows he _feels_ it, because sometimes she sees him lick his lips in the dark and all she wants to do is just swallow him whole. She’s still vague on how they haven’t just ripped each other’s uniforms off in the gym and done nasty things on Bernie’s pristine mats. (Less pristine than maybe possibly _theoretically_ bleached once a month, but whatever, she likes to pretend she’s not eating old man sweat every time she rolls.) She’s pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that after about an hour of kicking bags in the gym her legs get too shaky to hold her properly, so she stops—well, she doesn’t stop _thinking_ about pushing him down and licking every inch of him, but she stops being able to really manage it.

But yeah, whatever. It’s been nearly a month since Fisk’s capture, and nothing more’s happened than kissing, which is excellent in and of itself, and lots of touching. Which is also excellent, but mostly just—it’s wonderful and she _loves_ how intimate it is, just to hold hands with him, just to be able to reach out and touch his cheek when she wants to, and she will never, ever forget how important it is, but at the same time, _she wants to have sex with him, goddammit_.

So because she’s Darcy, and because she’s never really liked letting things lie, she waits until Matt drops down onto her fire escape that night, and when she opens the window, the first thing she says is, “So, you want to have sex with me, right?”

Matt nearly slips. It’s rained, tonight—actually, it’s been raining a lot, lately—and the grating of her fire escape is slippery at the best of times. But this is _Matt_. For Matt to nearly slip, she must have just given him the verbal equivalent of a shock with a cattle prod. He stands very straight and tips his face towards hers, inscrutable. “I would think,” he says, in a voice that _almost_ cracks, but doesn’t, quite, “that would be obvious.”

“Obvious,” Darcy repeats, because there’s—yeah. That makes something in her go all hot and tingly and it sure as hell isn’t her heart. (Well, it’s her heart a little bit, but, y’know.) “Well, uh. Okay. I was—I was wondering. I guess. Because like—I’ve been thinking back on it, and for the most part it seems like I’m the one that starts most of the physical stuff? Which isn’t a _bad_ thing, because yay, female sexuality, and I’m me, and you’ve been into it so yippee for enthusiastic consent, but like—it’s been a while, since everything. And things have stopped for the most part. And I know I said that I don’t really know how this shit works, when it comes to like—like loving, adult relationships. But seriously, you’re—yer killin’ me, smalls. I wasn’t joking, before, when I said sexual frustration was gonna kill me, but really. I think I might actually end up dead sooner or later. So. Yeah. Uh. That’s a thing.”

Matt doesn’t move an inch during the whole of her babbling. Actually, he doesn’t even seem to breathe. He stands so still that he might actually splinter into pieces if she touches him, even through the uniform. Even in the dark. So she folds her arms on her windowsill, and she just looks at him, her skin prickling. Then Matt shifts, and the scrape of his shoe over her fire escape is like a grenade bursting. She watches, and waits. Her spare glasses feel heavy and awkward on her nose, a pair of hipster frames she’d bought as a joke, never expecting to actually wear them; she keeps having to push them up. It’s only then that he finally seems to breathe.

“Do you think that I don’t want to touch you?”

This is not the answer she expected. Darcy’s lips part. She shoves her glasses up her nose again, and swallows. Her mouth is very dry, all at once. “I don’t know.” The words crackle on her tongue. “Do you?”

She can see a tendon tighten in his jaw. Matt swallows, and she watches his throat work. “Darcy,” he says, and this is the voice that she’s only ever heard when it’s just the two of them, the one that makes her insides curl. “I always want to touch you.”

She can’t help herself. “Oh.” Darcy clenches her nails into her palm. Matt’s nearly buzzing, though with what, exactly, she can’t tell. “Then—then why haven’t—”

She stops, because Matt’s crouched down by her window, tugging his mask off. His hair sticks up on the sides, thanks to the cowl, and she has to forcibly sit on her hands in order to keep herself from fixing it. There’s a gap in the clouds, and in the dim light of the half-moon, she can just make out a sheen of something damp on his lips. God, she wants to _bite_ him. Matt doesn’t reach out, doesn’t touch her. He tips his head in the motion she’s come to recognize as hyper-listening, as sinking deep into the world on fire and picking up everything, every sound, every scent, every minute shift. Then he snaps back into the moment, and focuses on her, instead. Which is. Um. A lot to think about.

“I remember at Columbia, sometimes I’d get distracted just because you were sitting next to me.” He keeps his hands flat against his thighs, fingers stiff and unmoving. “It happened in class, a lot. I’d be listening to the professor, and then suddenly I’d realize that you were there. That you were _right_ there, that if I reached out it’d only take a few inches of space before I could touch you. I could hear you breathe, and I could _feel_ the way the air moved around you, the way it shifted when you exhaled. And your heartbeat, god. There were times when I thought I’d drown in your heartbeat, because it was all I could hear.”

Holy shit. Holy _shit._ Holy fucking shit. She has no idea what to say. “Really?” she asks, and yeah, she knows that he said he’s been in love with her for years, but this—this takes a hypothetical and turns it into a law of physics. Or a universal constant.

“Your heartbeat,” he says. “Your breathing. The smell of your hair. All of it. And sometimes—sometimes I’d hear the beat change, and you’d turn your head. I’d hear you take a breath, hear you move, hear the—the way your _eyelashes_ would interlace when you blinked, I would be so focused. And sometimes I would just know that you were looking at me, not just—not just because of the movement of the air, or the smells or the sounds or the way your temperature shifted or any of it, but because I could just feel it. I could feel your eyes on me, and it was like—like a brand. Like a burn on my skin. And before all of this, before Fisk, I would think, _no. A person like her, a woman like her, no. She’s smarter than that. It’s not true. And even if it is, I won’t taint her. Not her._ ”

Holy shit. She can’t breathe. She can’t _breathe_. “Matt.”

He doesn’t seem to hear her. (But of course he hears her, he has to hear her, he _always_ hears her, and it’s going to destroy her, it’s going to break her apart and make her into something new, and she’s not sure she’s not going to let it—) “And now it’s different, because I _know_ you. I know who you are. I know what you taste like. I know the texture of your lips, how your breathing catches, how it feels when you smile. I know what it’s like to smear your lipstick, the way your hair feels when I thread my fingers through it, to let go and have my hand smell like your shampoo for hours after. Days. I know what it feels like to have you kiss me, to have your mouth on my skin, to have your hands on me. I know the dips in between your bones, I know the—I know that if I touch you here—” and he moves, then, not reaching out to her, but touching a spot beneath his jaw “—or here—” the place where her throat and her shoulder collide, tendons and muscle and skin “—that you’ll make this sound that’s like—I don’t know how to describe it. But I know how it is, now, to have you want me and _know_ that I’m not imagining it, that I’m not insane, that it’s happening and that it’s not wrong, know that the monster in me isn’t going to rip you apart. To know that you’ve seen every part of me and you still want this.”

She’s not sure if she’s blinked since he’s started speaking, not sure if her heart’s even beating. She doesn’t say a word. She just watches him, voiceless.

“So no,” he says, and she can’t move, even though every part of her is screaming to touch him, even though she’s not certain if she can actually take a full breath anymore, if her lungs will work the way normal lungs are supposed to, if she’s ever going to stop being flushed and overheated and oversensitive and _pounding_ with how much she wants him right now. “No, it’s not that I don’t want to touch you. Because now when I’m near you, when I hear you, when I catch your scent, when I feel the air stir and the way your temperature shifts and how you move, you are _layered_ with me. My hands have left a pattern on you. I know exactly where I’ve touched you, where I haven’t. I can trace out the exact spots where my mouth has been even days later. And you’re all over me, all the time, even if you’re blocks and blocks away. I can smell you on me, your shampoo and your perfume and your lipstick, your skin, Jesus, Darcy, I know every spot you’ve touched me because it’s as if you’ve left marks behind. I can smell me on you, and you on me, and it’s so—it’s overpowering. It’s driving me insane.”

Her blood surges in her ears. Darcy curls her toes hard into the blankets, digging her nails into her elbow, and just _looks_ at him, devouring the sight of him. Matt’s almost shaking, he’s so focused on her, so hyperaware, and for Christ’s sake, if she thought before that it was bad, now it’s—now it’s just inhumane, what he’s doing to her. What he’s done. Who he is. What he says. “Then if it’s like that,” Darcy says, and Matt stiffens, because this is a voice dancing on the edge of Lilith, low and drawling, need and want and desperation, “why aren’t you kissing me right now?”

Matt closes his eyes. He licks his lips, and _Jesus_ , the darting glimpse of his tongue is making her burn, pining, desperate. “It has to be you,” he says. “I can’t—I can’t explain it. It just has to be you who decides. Because even if I know this is real, and that you want this, I wake up some mornings terrified that I’m going to lose you, and I’m not about to be the one to push the envelope beyond what either of us can handle.”

The words drop into her like stones. Darcy takes a deep gulp of air, and blinks furiously, because god, _god_ , she can’t cry right now. She’s turned on and her heart hurts and she can’t breathe with it, any of it, and “oh my god, Matt, you are such an _idiot_.”

He says nothing. He doesn’t flinch. He just waits. She’s pretty sure he knows by now that that’s her newfound way of saying _I love you, I love you, I love you._ There’s a twist to his mouth that could be a smile. Darcy dabs at her eyes with the hem of her tank top, and then looks up at him again. Her throat’s gone prickling dry, and she has to swallow a few times before she can speak. “Tomorrow’s Friday.”

Matt presses his lips tight together. _God_. She wants them on her neck, on her breasts. She wants his mouth everywhere. “Friday,” he repeats, not losing his focus at all, barely even breathing. “What does Friday have to do with anything?”

“Friday,” she says, “is the end of the week.” There are goosebumps on her skin from the chill air outside. “Friday is before Saturday is before Sunday. And it is, traditionally, the best day of the week.”

“Do you have a point?” Matt asks. He’s close enough now that she can feel the words brushing across her face. He smells like sweat and like the suit, and his voice creeps into her, makes her press her legs tight together, makes her want to kiss him until she can’t fucking think. Darcy shoves her fists into the pockets of her pajama pants. Her glasses are sliding down her nose again.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to go to work.” She cocks her head, and she realizes when his hands tighten that he has to be able to hear her, smell her, know that she’s staring at him. “We’re going to be professional. I’m going to leave at five o’clock precisely. I’m guessing you’ll stay a little longer, maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen. And then you have a promise to live up to, Matthew. Because I distinctly remember you telling me that—” her voice doesn’t just break, then: it shatters, and reforms itself “—that you were going to make a study of every sound I could make.”

Matt makes a deep, guttural sound that shoots right to her guts, and Darcy closes her eyes, just for a moment. He stands, and takes one step back, out of reach, away from her. But it’s not to escape. It’s to keep himself sane. “ _Christ_ ,” he says, soft, vicious, like sandpaper against her skin. “Jesus _Christ_.”

“If you don’t leave,” she says, “right now, this fire escape is never going to be the same.”

He departs without another word, swinging over the edge and vanishing into the shadows, and Darcy stands. She lets the cold air wash over her skin—sweaty, too-tight, prickling with the need for touch—and then she goes into the bathroom and takes a very long, very cold shower. Because as appealing as it is to think of just getting herself off, just deal with it alone, she knows for a fact that Matt will hear her. And that’s not something either of them are prepared for.

Darcy doesn’t sleep very well.

.

.

.

The fear starts to curl through her on the way in to the office the next morning. The light of day seems to put things into perspective a bit, makes it a little more real. _Why didn’t I just drag him into my room?_ She kicks the next lamppost she passes. Now she’s actually nervous, about sex, which is something she’s never been nervous about before, even when she’d never had it. But this isn’t falling into bed with someone she’s just met in a bar, or going out on a blind date, or, hell, even sex with Eduardo, which was very rewarding and everything, but the depth of feeling she’d had for Eduardo compared to the depth of feeling she has for Matt Murdock and his stupid everything is like comparing a teaspoon to a fucking ocean. This isn’t just casual, or a fling, or—or what have you. This is a choice. It’s not even a choice, it’s _her_ choice, and for Matt to give her the choice—the same Matt who pulls on a battle suit every night and beats people until they scream, the same Matt who is so utterly in control of himself, not only of his feelings but how he _presents_ himself, how he walks and talks and touches things, how he views the world: Matt is giving _her_ the choice. It’s more intimate than a love confession, more startling than him sharing all his secrets, because this is Matt giving her the choice, not quite giving her control, exactly, but letting her preserve her own _._ And this is _Matt—_ control is the one thing he can’t stand to let anyone take from him, and _Jesus fucking Christ,_ the level of _trust_ that that shows in her—

She's dead, she truly is. 

She’s early in to work. Not even Karen is here yet, which means Darcy gets to make the coffee without Karen getting twitchy and nervous about it. (Karen learned weird habits, working as a secretary in Union Allied. She’s always relieved when she comes in to find someone else has brewed coffee, but if someone else tries to brew it in front of her, she feels like she’s not doing her job right. Or so she says.) Foggy’s in next (and she wonders if it shows on her face, the monumental shift, the transformation of the universe, but he doesn’t seem to notice anything is different. Darcy doesn’t say anything about it). She’s already in the office with her headphones in and watching the clock when Matt finally shows up, slipping into their shared office. Darcy swallows hard, and stares at her papers until she can’t manage it any longer. He’s wearing the thin rectangular glasses he used at Columbia, and the change makes her heartbeat stumble. She’s pretty sure that was the intention, because the corners of his mouth turn up when he shuts the office door behind him. (And he _shuts the door_ , which isn’t weird at all, they usually keep the door shut so that Foggy and Karen shouting at the photocopier doesn’t bother them too much, but god, he said all those things and she said what she did and now the _door is shut,_ and she’s freaking out like a teenager, what the hell is this, even, she can’t—)

“Hi,” Matt says, and he sounds almost normal. Almost, but not quite. There’s that effervescent spark to him again that she remembers from right after they put Fisk away, from the rainstorm. And then Darcy can’t help it. She smiles.

“Hello.”

He stands there for a second or two longer, and she just watches him, unblinking, her smile stinging at her cheeks, because she’s so in love with him it makes her feel like she’s splitting open. Then he sits down, and the waiting game begins.

It’s okay for the first few hours. She calms down enough to get some things done in the nail salon case, and they have a meeting in the conference room with Karen and Foggy to go over schedules for next week. Matt sits next to her in that, though, and about halfway through she shifts just enough for their knees to touch underneath the table. He doesn’t react, not immediately, but as he’s saying something to Foggy about going to the courthouse and talking to someone’s clerk, he drops his hand from the arm of the chair and touches his fingertips very, very lightly to the back of her wrist. And it’s as if he’s inserted a coal underneath her skin from the sudden shift, like her blood’s been switched out for flowing lava. It feels like the air is made of molasses, something hanging heady and warm and completely undeniable. And _this_ —this is what Foggy must have been talking about, when he’d said _tension_. She’s never realized how long this has been hanging over them until now, how _heavy_ it is. It feels as though she has a three ton weight dangling from her neck.

Darcy rests her hand on his thigh for three breaths, and then draws away. When she peeks at him out of the corner of her eye, after, Matt’s ears are red.

She does, you know, try to be professional. She is an adult. She can be professional. She can do that shit upside-down and backwards. (Except she can’t, really, because she’s a lawyer that’s wearing an _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ t-shirt underneath her button down and still carries around her _Mass Effect_ messenger bag like it’s armor, because hell yeah it is, femShep for the world. But that’s beside the point.) She does _try_. But it’s very hard, after that moment. Because their office is _so_ small, and she has to keep asking him about the newest case they’ve just picked up firm-wide, because yeah, she missed that meeting working with one of Santino’s homeless babies, and every time he has to talk to her he clears his throat as if his mouth is too dry to use, and god. _God._ She’s never wanted to touch someone so much in her life as she wants to touch Matt Murdock right now.

She imagines it, just for a minute or two. Just standing up and crossing the room and kissing him, pushing his chair back from his desk and hitching her skirt up, straddling his lap. There’s a window in their office—god, their office is _all_ windows, and even with the blinds down it’d be their luck to have Karen look at just the right angle, see the wrong thing. But she _wants_ it. She wants to get her hands on him, wants him inside her. She wants. She _wants,_ and she realizes that she’s wet from thinking it in the same moment that she shifts in her chair, uncrossing her legs _. Christ_. On the other side of the room, Matt makes this sound like—she doesn’t even know what. As if she’s ripped something out of his throat with her fingernails. And—yeah. There’s heat and blood rushing into her cheeks, pounding in her ears. What the hell is she supposed to say? _Sorry you can smell how turned on I am._ Or: _Really, it’s your fault, considering you’re sitting there with your dumb face and your hands and your motherfucking voice, Murdock, you should check yourself into some kind of institution, you’re bad for my health._ Or even: _I’d ask you to help, but I feel like that’d set a bad standard for office professionalism._

Oh, she’d be in so much trouble with that last one. 

“You’re making things very difficult,” Matt says, his voice cracking. His hands are very still on the braille reader. “I hope you know that.”

“Hm.” Darcy grins down at her papers, and hooks her ankles together again. “But you love it.”

For a second, the only sounds she can hear are Foggy and Karen talking in the next room. Then, slowly, Matt’s mouth curls. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s enough, and it’s more than worth sitting with uncomfortably damp underwear for the next few hours.

Leaving the office without running is a truly gargantuan effort, and though Karen gives her a bit of an odd look for how quickly she books it, neither Foggy nor Karen seem to have noticed anything different. Which, yeah, she’s actually good with. Not that she doesn’t love Foggy and Karen to pieces, but she just doesn’t want this noticed, yet. They’ll probably be able to tell, later, but whatever, that’s what comes with being so close. And it’s just—she wants this to be private, for now. Which is so _weird_ , because usually she doesn’t give a shit if people know she’s slept with someone. But yeah. It’s different, again. Because it’s all different, it’s all foreign territory, and she’s actually excited about it. She wants to chart new monuments.

Darcy waits for him at the end of the block, tapping her fingers nervously against her hip. Matt moves more slowly when he’s out in daylight, tapping his cane back and forth. She doesn’t touch him, just falls into step beside him without a word, her earbuds pressed close into her ears and music blaring in an effort to ground herself. (Of course, this has the weird effect, later, of associating “American Woman” with sex, but it’s a price she’s willing to pay.)

Matt drops back behind her a little when they get to his building. She can feel his breath on the back of her neck. He’s _so_ close, and she’s fighting the urge to just stop walking and let him crash into her, because she knows he would, even if he knows exactly where she is, even if he can hear the air catching in her sleeves, stopping would be an invitation.

She shoves her iPod into her bag, and starts climbing the stairs.

They haven’t even made it halfway down the hall on his floor when he finally breaks. She’s not quite sure what she does—she thinks back on it, later, and all she can remember is that she’d just tucked her hair behind her ears—but all of a sudden there’s a hand on her elbow, and then he’s crowding up against her, her back hits the wall, and he’s _right_ there, pressing close to her, closer and closer again. _Finally_ , she thinks, and she might say it aloud, because when she seizes the fabric of his shirt in her good hand, he’s laughing. The sound of it is a firework inside her skin, bursting, burning. Then it’s warmth and breath and touch, and Darcy’s not sure which of them broke first after all.

She’s pulling, he’s pushing. Or the other way around, she doesn’t know. Pulling, pushing. Pushing, pulling. His mouth’s too far away, touching hers but only just, air skittering over her lips, warm and damp and god, why isn’t he kissing her right now? Darcy tips her head up and her lower lip catches against his, a delicious slide. Matt’s hands are in her hair, fumbling with the alligator clasp at the back of her head that she’d wound her hair up in rather than wash it, and Jesus, he’s _fumbling_ , Matt who can probably find every single blemish in the wall without ever hesitating is fumbling because of _her_ , and holy shit. That’s it. Arousal, quadrupled. The clip comes away, hits the ground with a clatter, and the tug of his hands in her hair makes her skin prickle all over. _Then_ he’s kissing her, open-mouthed, sloppy, and Darcy makes a soft, wanting sound, tugging at the buttons of his jacket. Their glasses click until she tips her head one way, and Matt shifts, and then _there,_ that’s the right angle, and _Christ,_ she just wants to kiss him always, lazy and slow, fast, hard, heavy, all of it, until she’s learned his mouth so well she can’t tell it apart from her own, until there’s no separation.

There’s sunlight dappling her skin through the window, warm and bright in the deceptive way of winter sunshine, and when she looks at him through half-lidded eyes she sees strange, webbing patterns over his cheekbone, down his throat. Branches, from the elm outside. Then his hands drop to her waist, tugging the hem of her button down and her t-shirt free of her skirt, and the feel of his palms on her ribs might actually kill her. _Fuck_. That one she definitely said aloud, because Matt’s smiling as he darts his tongue over her lower lip, and seriously, just—just fuck him, _fuck_ him, she’s going to kill him as soon as she gets him to touch every inch of her and then some. She’s seen him ruin people with these hands, and he’s ruining her now, but it’s a whole new kind of devastation that she’d gladly repeat for as long as she can manage it.

“Inside,” she says into his mouth, muffled, impossible, because while _she’s_ perfectly fine with just getting hoisted up against the wall, she’s pretty sure Matt’s neighbors won’t be quite so understanding. She can’t get the word out without kissing him, can’t stop, can’t breathe. “Inside, inside.”

“Bossy,” Matt says, and she’s not sure where his cane’s gone but it’s _definitely_ not in his hands when he strokes his thumbs over her hips, swiping just beneath the waistband of her skirt. Darcy knocks her head back against the wall and _whines_ , because Jesus Christ, usually she’s ticklish there but now it’s like someone’s tracing embers and flame over her skin, and she can’t, she _can’t_. She’s fucking _throbbing_ , and she can’t stop.

“Bastard,” she says, in a rough, smoky voice that is completely unlike her own. “You son of a bitch. Stop _playing_ , Murdock.”

“Who says I’m playing?” Matt says, but she can hear the smile in his voice, triumphant and more than a little wild. He cups her face in his hands, draws his tongue along hers in an excruciating slide, and she’s going to kill him. She’s going to _kill_ him. She hooks the fingers of her good hand into his belt loops and tugs him forward, and suddenly he’s pressed all up against her where he’d been holding himself just slightly back, and she can feel him against her thigh, thick and hard. When she shifts her leg against it, Matt makes a sound as if he’s just been gutted. Darcy weasels her hand beneath his shirt, beneath the white tee he wears underneath the button-down, and relishes the way he’s pushing her into the wall, caught between pressure and pleasure.

“I told you,” she says, breathless. “I always know when you’re bullshitting me.”

Matt heaves a breath. He kisses her, rolling like the sea, kissing her until her head tips back, until she bares her throat, until she’s actually physically shaking. She’s barely on her feet anymore, propped up with his hands on her hips, her ribs, and she realizes with a start that he’s slid a leg between both of hers and she _hadn’t fucking noticed_. She digs her nails into his shoulder blade, pressing her bad hand flat against his back, and bites down hard enough on his lower lip that he actually jumps. She’s not entirely sure what that was supposed to make him do— _stop? Please god don’t let him stop—_ but Matt says “ _fucking Christ_ ,” low and harsh and raw against her mouth, and suddenly she’s off the floor, out of her shoes, her legs are winding around his waist and his hands are twisting tight into her hair, enough to sting, and yeah, okay, Mrs. Hseng can be mentally scarred. That’s totally fine.

“Inside,” Matt says, and his voice—holy shit. “Keys, pocket. Inside.”

She’s not sure how she manages to get his keys out of his pocket with him drawing his teeth along her jaw, his tongue tracing patterns in the hollow underneath, because the world’s gone fuzzy. Somehow she manages to get a finger through the keyring, and then Matt’s taken them from her—and he’s holding her up with _one arm_ , she’s never liked being short because it means people think they can pick her up and carry her away, but now it’s strangely, irredeemably (because fuck you, Murdock, seriously, _fuck you for being so strong_ ) sexy. Her spine curves against the door as he jury-rigs it, and then they’re through, and she realizes that she’s left her shoes in the hallway in the same instant Matt kicks the door shut. She doesn’t care. She sets her feet to the floor again, her back flat against the wall again, up on her tiptoes _again_ , and this time when she kisses him she drives her fingernails in to the back of his scalp and uses her teeth just as much as her tongue. Matt doesn’t even flinch. She’s thought of this before, with him, with the physicality and the violence of him, but she loves it. She _loves_ how he never flinches, because with other people she’s slept with, other people she’s fucked (though she’s not sure what this is, in that spectrum, what this can be called) they’ve always retreated. She’s a better one-off, a wild one-night-stand, because she can’t turn it off, this need to snap and snarl and _claim_. She thinks it might be where Lilith hid herself, those years when Darcy had tried to pretend that this side of her didn’t exist. She bites, she claws, she can’t stop herself, and yet here’s Matt, and there’s his hands pressing so hard into her hips that it feels like his fingertips will leave marks, and there’s his mouth, his teeth, scraping and soothing all at once, and she’s overloading, her brain’s shutting down, there’s only sensation and _holy shit, holy shit, holy shit_.

Her jacket’s on the floor before they make it three feet into the apartment. Her shirt—both of them, actually—vanishes seconds later, magicked away or who the fuck knows, so when somehow they end up in the bedroom (she can’t remember how they managed to get there, only the feel of the floor against the soles of her feet and Matt everywhere, his hands _everywhere_ , but somehow never quite where she wants them, not on her breasts or between her legs or even on her ass, and _what the fuck are you playing at, Murdock—_ ) it’s her bare back and her bra against Matt’s fingers, and her nails scratching through his clothes, because why the fuck is he still wearing things, why are ties so difficult, why does he have so many _clothes—_

Her knees clock against the edge of the bed, almost give out. Something sputters in her brain. “If your furniture,” she says, as she finally yanks the jacket off him and lets it drop, “hurts me right now, I will _kill it dead_.”

She feels him smile against the skin of her throat in the moment before he nips the muscle there, the tendon, and shit fuck _shit_ she wants his hands on her right now, right now, _right_ now— “I keep telling you to be nice to it.”

“Shut _up_.” She hooks her nails into the knot of his tie, and loosens it just enough that she can pull it free. It ends up somewhere near the bedroom door. “Your furniture is _Satan_.”

Matt laughs, tickling against her collarbone. She undoes the buttons of his shirt, one-handed, and takes his mouth again, drawing her fingers down his arm, just touching, just wanting. She’s not sure how they manage to get the shirt off without tearing it, but it’s close. Then there’s the tee, and she yanks at the edge, at the seam, until it’s up and over his head, mussing his hair, knocking his glasses askew. And then there’s Matt, the torn and broken seams of him, scarred and bruised and beautiful. She presses her mouth to the line of his clavicle, because she loves them, these bones, she’s doesn’t quite know why, and when she sets her palm flat against his stomach she can feel his muscles twitch. There’s still gauze over the gash Nobu left behind, fresh and white, the tape fraying at one edge. You can bruise even through the armor, and Matt’s like—she’s not sure what he’s like. Not like her, that’s for sure. She’s not even sure how to describe it without being stupid and sappy and romance novelist-y. Like fish-eggs. Like casting shadows on marble. Like sunset on moss. And suddenly even though she’s burning, even though she’s falling to ash, she thinks she might just be able to stand there and touch him, light and gentle and endless. She wants to touch him always.

“What?” Matt kisses her again, and again, his mouth never quite leaving hers. “What is it? You’re smiling, what are you thinking?”

“What am I thinking?” She’s not sure that she _is_ thinking. “What am I thinking. I’m thinking that I—” she pushes her thumb into a pale spot between his ribs, where she knows she won’t hurt him “—am wishing that my hand was better so I could use both. And—” Matt ducks his head and presses his mouth to the spot where her neck and shoulder join, and air twists in her lungs, catches “—that you should just be like—shirtless. All the time. Always shirtless.”

This time, when he laughs, it’s loud and sharp against her throat. “It’d be hard to fight shirtless.”

“Yeah, but—but so much easier for me—” she bends, puts her mouth to the skin of his chest, just underneath the scar, and Matt—she’s not sure if he flinches or if his breathing hitches or if she’s just imagining it, but his skin tastes like salt and warmth and something a little deeper, something she can’t quite make out, and _god_ , she loves this. “—to do that.”  

He stays very still. Darcy peeks up at him through her eyelashes (his glasses are still knocked sideways, and she loves this nerd, she really does, and he’s _such_ a dork sometimes she can’t help but squash him) before touching her mouth to him again, on a scar, this time, a knife-cut still pink and raw and sore-looking. Matt cups his hand to the back of her neck, and his fingers are trembling. She rests her palm on his shoulder, going on tiptoe, pushing her mouth against his jaw, the edge of his lips. “You okay? You kinda froze up on me.”

Matt shakes his head once. Darcy lifts her hand to his cheek. Then, slowly, so he has time to pull back, she takes off the rectangular glasses, folding them up in her hand. His eyes are closed. When she crooks her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, his eyelashes flicker against his cheek. He wets his lips, and says, “It’s very—”

“Very?”

“Very—hm.” He leans down and draws his mouth along the rim of her ear. He’s tracing something against the bare skin of her back, and it’s making her shiver. “Hard to explain.”

Her mouth goes a bit dry. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He tips her head up, gives her another one of those rolling kisses, the ones that destroy her brain. “Trying to keep track of everything.”

How is he not incoherent right now? “Everything?” Darcy says, a little muzzy, and the smile he gives her—Christ. That’s _all_ devil. And at the same time it’s _all_ Matt, all of them, all of him, and she rests her hands on his waist, pushing into his hipbones, unable to keep herself from touching him. “What do you mean, everything?”

“All of it,” Matt lowers his head and puts his mouth on the sensitive spot beneath her jaw, his lips curving up when she lets out an involuntary yip. “Everything you’re doing, everything—everything that’s happening. The way you catch your breath when I touch you. The way you taste.” He touches his tongue to the pulse point in her throat, and her skin is _screaming_ for something, she’s just not sure what it is.  “It’s just sometimes hard to keep things straight.” 

Hypersensitivities. Superpowers. _Holy shit._ What does he feel when he touches her? _Like what I feel, only—only more powerful._ Christ, this whiplash between desperate want and sudden, overwhelming tenderness would kill her if she was with anyone other than Matt. Darcy pushes herself up on tiptoe again. When she leans into him it’s her breasts against his bare chest, her stomach pressed close to his, and she kisses him, again and again and again. It’s like she’s being consumed, like she’s consuming. He’s still only touching her in the places he’s touched before, her hair, her throat, her face; the bones of her shoulders, the skin of her hips, her stomach. The very edges of her breasts, not even fully palming them, just barely brushing his fingers along the rims. She hooks her nails into his hair, and bites him, not hard, just a little, just enough. His hands seize against the skin beneath her bra strap.

“Tell me if it gets to be too much,” she says, “and we can stop.”

Matt blinks once, his eyes half-lidded, his mouth puffy. This time, when he smiles, it’s something shy and soft, almost like twilight. He tips her chin up and kisses her with the same delicacy he’d used in that moment when they’d decided to fight for this, when they’d decided, together, that they wanted this.

“I love you,” he says, and she’s standing close enough that she can feel the words as much as hear them, taste them on her tongue. He kisses her again. “I love you.”

Darcy hums. For once, she doesn’t actually have the words. So she dips her head to his collar again, and kisses him instead, scars and skin both. Matt stands very still, as if he’s waiting to be struck by lightning, like he’s been cast in stone.

“I love you,” she says against the skin of his shoulder, so soft she can’t even hear herself. He must feel how her lips move, must be able to tell, because the muscles tighten under his skin. Then she lifts her head, and says, “But I swear to god if you don’t touch me _right now_ we are going to have a problem.”

“Ah,” says Matt, and there’s that wicked smile again. “A _problem._ ”

“Just fucking—” wrong choice of words, maybe, but she doesn’t give a shit, she’s _so far_ from giving ashit at the moment “—if you don’t put your hand somewhere completely inappropriate _right_ now—”

She only gets halfway through the word _inappropriate_ before Matt moves. She’s not entirely sure when things changed, when they flipped, but Matt’s shifted now, almost entirely, letting the masks down, letting her see, and in the moment she loses all her breath, he slips his hand past the waistband of her skirt (he undoes the catch without her noticing, somehow, without her realizing) and beneath the thin fabric of her underwear to stroke one finger along the spot where her leg and her hip fuse. The sound she makes—caught between her teeth, higher and thinner than any sound she’s ever made—makes that smile come back.

“Is this inappropriate?” He drags his thumb along that one spot, slowly, and she hisses. Then he shifts again, and there’s his palm pressed against her, and _god_. She wants his fingers inside her. Or his cock. Or even his tongue, she’s not picky at this point. She wants _something_ inside. “You’re going to have to be more specific, or I can’t be sure if I’m doing this right.”

“You asshole.” She pushes down into his hand, and Matt makes a little sound of his own, strangled against her mouth. Darcy digs her fingernails into his shoulder, and clenches his hand tight between her legs, rolling her hips once, twice. “You _fucking asshole._ ”

“Granted,” Matt says, and then she’s on the bed, and she’s not quite sure how she ended up there, but Matt’s worked her skirt off, her pantyhose and her underwear. She unhooks her bra herself (she feels weird lying here in it) and she’s just dropped it over the edge of the bed when he finally toes his shoes off, settles himself with his knees against her hips, and kisses her, bent over her, touching his mouth to hers just for an instant before resting his lips to the dip between her collarbones. Darcy starts to sit up, to follow him, but before she can manage it he licks a stripe along her right clavicle, across her sternum, and she can’t find it in her to really move right now if he’s going to keep doing that.

“What do you want me to do?” The words come out a bit breathy, but whatever. “Tell me.”

Matt blinks, and then sets his mouth to her shoulder, to a bruise from training or from work or from both, she can’t remember where it came from. It’s about the length of her middle finger, the width of a tube of toothpaste. He touches it so lightly it doesn’t even ache, and then he rests his nose against her throat. She can feel his lips moving against her skin when he says, “I want you to do whatever you want to do.”

“That’s—ah.” He’s kissing her collarbone again, and lower. “That’s, um—very open-ended, prosecution would have a field day with that.”

His laugh is less a laugh then a puff of air over her skin. “Good.”

She snorts. “You’re such a _loser._ ”

“This coming from you,” Matt says, and then he sets his mouth to the dip between her breasts, against her sternum, his tongue flicking across her skin. She loses her voice for a moment.

“Can’t really argue with that one,” she says, and hooks her fingers into his hair. “Carry on. But lose the pants first, this feels very uneven.”

Matt hums against her skin. “Later.”

When she shifts her knee, she can feel his hard-on through his slacks, and she can’t resist the urge to raise her hand, draw her nails along his waist. His teeth scuff over her skin, not quite a warning, not quite a _yes._ “Later?”

“Too busy,” he says, and then he nips at her breast, just hard enough to make her yelp.

“Matthew—Jesus.”

“I love the way you taste.” He touches his fingertips to her ribcage, drawing them higher. Matt touches his mouth to the top of her right breast, just barely breathing over her skin, and it makes her whole body prickle and squeeze. “It’s almost exactly like you smell, but it’s—it’s just barely different.”

“Like bleach?” she asks, because she can’t help it. Matt laughs, and finally, _finally_ draws his fingertips over her areola, slowly, like he’s savoring it. Or torturing her, it really could be either one.

“No,” he says, “sweet,” and then he sets his mouth over her nipple. Darcy huffs, and digs her nails into his hair. She’s always been a bit sensitive where her breasts were concerned, but now it’s like—she has no idea. What are words. Matt scrapes his teeth over the knot of it and the noise she makes is like fracturing glass in her throat. Darcy arches up into his mouth and whines again, and she might just be babbling a little bit, it could be in Spanish or English or fucking Esperanto, she’s not sure, she’s just been more than half-turned on all fucking day, since last night if she’s getting technical about it, and when he pushes just a little at the underside of her nipple with his tongue it’s like stars burst behind her eyes. Darcy scrapes her nails into his shoulders, but Matt’s already shifted to the other side, nipping at the soft skin on the underside of her breast before returning to his game, and in the same moment he slides his hand back in between her legs and strokes one finger into her.

Darcy _yelps._ She can’t help it. He’s really not being fair. Her brain is melting. “ _That_ ,” she says, “again, please—” and this time when he touches her he moves his mouth to her ribs, feathering his lips and tongue over the skin of her belly, to the curve of her hip. She digs her nails into the sheets, because she’s really not sure what else to do. “Matt—”

His fingers—the ones that are pressed into her thigh, not stroking _utterly incomprehensible_ patterns against her cunt, against her clit—press hard into her skin. Then he sets his mouth to the curls between her legs, and she has to bite her tongue, because _holy shit_ , she’s pretty sure the last time someone went down on her was—forever ago. She usually has to argue with someone about this shit, not—not just have it happen. Like a gift. “This is okay?” Matt says, almost too quietly for her to hear over the thunder of her heart, but then he lifts his head and says it again, questioning. It’s not asking for permission—or it is, but it’s more than that, she thinks. It’s almost like by asking he’s trying to confirm that she’s still there, awake and present and wanting this. Darcy swallows twice.

“Have at it, Mattster,” she says, and it’s meant to be a joke but it comes out softer, a thousand things she can’t quite say all wrapped up inside it, things like _I love you_ and _god, how can a person like you exist_ and _please don’t leave me_ and so many others that she can’t even start with. “If you’re so inclined.”

Matt blinks, slowly. His eyelashes shadow his cheeks. Then he smiles, and dips his head again. He sets his lips to the inside of her thigh, once, twice. Then his tongue flickers over her clit, and she’s lost.

She’d be embarrassed about how quickly she comes, if not for the fact that she can’t actually breathe. It only takes a few minutes before she arches up off the bed, mouth opening, soundless, and when she comes back down again she realizes she’s actually scratched red lines into the skin of Matt’s shoulder. He doesn’t look particularly bothered about it. He’s braced close, not-watching her, his eyes half-lidded. She can see the line of his cock straining against the fabric of his pants, but he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it. She’s still panting and trying to remember what English is when she hooks one finger into his belt loop, and he fits his mouth to hers again. She can taste salt and something tangy on his mouth, and she knows it’s from her. Darcy makes a soft sound, and pushes at his shoulder, rolling him until she’s straddling his waist and she’s the one bending down over him, now, her hair sticking to the back of her neck. “Why the fuck are you still in pants?”  

“You could help instead of complaining, you know,” Matt says, and she bites his lower lip hard. It’s meant to be a warning, but he surges up underneath her, until she’s rocked back, straddling his waist, and his mouth pushes hard into hers, his hands tangling in her hair, and she will never quite understand why he loves touching her hair so much but she has absolutely no complaints. She can’t stop touching him, and it’s glorious. She’s not quite sure how much time has passed by the time they finally get his slacks off, and his boxers, and let them both drop to the end of the bed, but it’s not ever going to be enough. She sucks the tip of his tongue into her mouth, and then draws back.

“Condoms.”

“In the— _Christ_ , Darcy.”

“Oops,” she says, and touches her fingers to the head of his cock again, because she can, and because he’s beautiful, the lines and the curves of him. Even with the bruises and the scars. Maybe _because_ of them, and she won’t think about how sadistic that makes her, but he _is_ beautiful, and when she curls her fingers around him he hisses between his teeth and pushes forward into her hand, like he can’t help it. “C’mon, tell me.”

There are splotches of red against his throat, and she’s not sure if it’s a blush or marks from her mouth. “Drawer.”

She’s not sure whether she wants to laugh when she sees that he must have bought a fresh box in preparation for this. She settles for kissing him again. “Whole weekend, huh,” she says, and he smiles in the way that makes her whole body clench, rolling up into her completely without shame.

“You’re the one who said you wanted me to keep a promise.”

“Jesus Christ, don’t say things like that without warning.” The foil packet ends up somewhere near the pillows, and her hands are trembling a little as she fits the condom over him. “You okay?”

“More than.” When he kisses her it’s like coming home, like this is always what it’s supposed to have been, and god, she wishes she’d been brave enough to believe it was possible earlier, that he could love her, that it would be all right. But they’re here, now, so she supposes that makes it all right. He kisses her cheek, her jaw. “You?”

“Get your mouth back here,” she says, and he’s laughing when she presses into him, mouth and skin and hands. She’s not sure why she didn’t realize it would be like this, laughter and smiles, because god, she’s been so used to the darkness lately that she’d forgotten what this sort of happiness feels like. But that’s a lie, sort of, because sex has never been like this with her, never quite been this—this _vivid._ It’s addicting. Darcy shifts her hips back until she can feel him against her, and the noise he makes then—god, she wants to memorize it. She pushes her nails into his ribs. “You want me somewhere?”

“Everywhere,” Matt says, and rasps his mouth over the underside of her jaw. “Here. At work. At the gym. On the street. All of it, everywhere.”

“You’re an exhibitionist,” she says, and fits her hand around him, raising her hips until she can line him up. “Should have expected that, considering the BDSM suit.”

“Hypocrite,” Matt says, and pushes up into her. She can’t help the sound she makes, broken and unstable. Matt, though—he’s silent, his eyes closed, and she thinks he might be listening. To what, she’s not sure. Darcy presses her mouth to the soft spot just before his ear, and rocks once, back and forth, until she feels him breathing.

“You good?”

Matt touches his fingertips to her cheeks, stroking down to her throat and back up again. Everything is still, for a moment. Then his eyes open, and he slips his hand down between them, rolling up into her and pressing his thumb to her clit in the same desperate moment. And then they’re moving, finding a rhythm, and she clenches around him and grinds down because she can’t not, she wants him to feel a _fraction_ of what he’s doing to her, even a milligram, and it seems to work because he starts swearing as if he’s getting paid to do it, low and fast.

He comes before she does. She’s surprised he’s managed to hold on this long, and so when he freezes, eyelashes flickering, pulsing inside her, she rests her bad hand against his shoulder and rides him through it, driving herself up higher and higher, her fingers twisting at her clit. It’s only a few minutes later that she crests again, high and breaking, keening in the back of her throat. Matt brushes her hair back out of her face, kissing her, swallowing the sound. It’s like freefall, this time, and when she crashes back into her body, he’s hooking his fingers through her hair, rolling his hips in time with hers, fucking her through it even though she can feel him loosening up. Darcy hums into his mouth.

“Hello,” she says again, and Matt smiles.

“Hello,” he replies, and she can’t do anything but smile stupidly back at him for a minute or two. She feels—god. Her limbs are lead, and she’s _tired_ , but in a good way. She puts her mouth to the corner of his lips, and he turns his face into hers, kissing her slowly, lazily, like they have all day.

And they do, she realizes. They have all weekend.

“Come to the shower with me,” she says into his mouth. “It’s a pain in the ass to wash my hair when I only have one hand.”

His lips twitch. “And that is _completely_ the only reason.”

“Oh, completely.” She slips off him, swinging her legs off the bed. Her knees feel shivery. “Though I wouldn’t say no to anything else.”

“Duly noted,” Matt says, and yeah. No matter how long it took them to get here, and how terrible some of it was, she won’t trade a second of it. She wouldn’t give this up for the world.


End file.
